Tag Archives for Apple

Many people believe that the competitive edge that iPhone and Apple enjoys over its competitors is the high-class leadership of the world renowned Steve Jobs. This is truly a reason why iPhone stands out of the ordinary and enjoys magnanimous success and market share all over the world. But, can anyone think as to what difference can one man bring about in the operations of a company? Well, I will surely open up not a new, but a perspective that generally ends up being ignored.

What companies do to stand-out?

Upon all the discussions and accolades that iPhone and Apple enjoys with respect to the leadership of Steve Jobs, one must understand the basis and the core philosophy at which the company is rooted.

Each company begins its operations with a few statements out of which the Mission Statement is far more realistic and logical as it is achievable. The mission statement is a statement of purpose and philosophy behind the existence of the company.

Moreover, strategies are made in order to achieve the designed company objectives. Normally we see technological companies based upon the Red Ocean Strategy, which is to capture what competitors are doing and perform it better than them.

Apple Computers actually work on the Blue Ocean Strategy.

The Blue Ocean Strategy of Apple iPhone

The Blue Ocean Strategy actually refers to the fact when an organization actually considers the competition as well as the market as ‘irrelevant’. This is when the company takes up a unique technology as its interface and develops a market of its own.

This Blue Ocean strategy is a huge reason why iPhone enjoys more than fifty percent of the world’s market share and Nokia, Siemens, Sony Eriksson, LG and Motorola combined are unable to decrease iPhone’s market share.

The Blue Ocean strategy has worked wonders as no matter how great your application is, it first has to be checked by people at Apple then they would convert it into the compatible format of the iPhone and upload it to the Apple Store. No application can be run on the iPhone without following this procedure. And this way, all iPhone users globally stay connected to one single hub, the Apple Store.

The Blue Ocean Strategy has done wonders for iPhone and Apple as a whole. Courtesy the mindset at which Steve Jobs operates the company, Apple promises to go a long way and would continue to fly high, no matter what (And I really mean it!!!).

More proof, if proof were needed, that Apple needs a low cost iPhone to get its smartphone momentum mojo back: Cupertino’s share of the global smartphone market fell to its lowest for three years in Q2, according to Strategy Analytics, with just 31.2 million iPhones shipped in the quarter and Apple’s second place ranking declining to a 14% market share – this despite the overall smartphone market growing 47% annually to reach a record 230 million units shipped.

“The current iPhone portfolio is under-performing and Apple is at risk of being trapped in a pincer movement between rival 3-inch Android models at the low-end and 5-inch Android models at the high-end,” said Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, in a statement.

Mawston told TechCrunch it’s not just a low cost iPhone that Apple needs to return to growth, although he agrees that is a requirement for Apple to drive extra volume. Cupertino’s top priority should be a new type of flagship to compete with Samsung’s phablets, he said.

“Apple’s first priority should be a premium-tier phablet with a 5-inch screen because that is where the largest new revenue pool is located,” he said via email. “Apple is losing profit share to Samsung partly because of a lack of presence in the phablet segment. Apple’s second priority should be a lower-cost iPhone to win back some of the customers it is losing to cheaper Android models in Asia, Africa and Latin America.”

“A 5-inch iPhone would generate extra value for Apple, while a cheaper iPhone would deliver extra volume,” he added.

Overall, the analyst said smartphone market growth is being driven by demand for 4G handsets in developed markets such as the U.S. and 3G devices in emerging markets such as India. Asian mobile makers, who predominately use Google’s Android OS, are now clearly dominating the surging smartphone market, with Samsung still in kingpin position – shipping 76 million devices in Q2 to capture one-third of all smartphone volumes worldwide in the quarter – and LG, ZTE and Huawei in third, fourth and fifth place respectively.

The analyst described LG as a “star performer”, with its global shipments doubling year-over-year to hit 12.1 million units in Q2 to take a 5% share. “The popular Optimus and Nexus models have been the main drivers of LG’s success. If LG can expand its retail presence and marketing in major countries such as the US or China, LG could quietly start to challenge Apple for second position,” Analyst Linda Sui added in a statement.

Chinese mobile maker ZTE also took a 5% share in the quarter, shipping a record 11.5 million smartphones to take fourth place for the first time, while Huawei shipped 11.1 million handsets to also grab 5% and take fifth.

Last year, when Verizon Wireless and Comcast were trying to get lawmakers to sign off on a giant wireless spectrum sale/noncompete pact, the two companies also said they were going to create a technology/R&D joint venture. It was supposed to come up with really cool tech products that consumers would love.

That JV is now dead. Verizon announced its demise today during the company’s earnings call, but said the partnership actually ended in late August.

The news here is that the most important part of the Comcast/Verizon deal hasn’t changed. Verizon still owns valuable spectrum it purchased from Comcast, and the two companies are still agreeing not to compete – or at least not to compete very vigorously.

It’s not surprising that Comcast and Verizon have concluded that their JV didn’t make sense. Most JVs don’t. And if there is an example of two companies at the scale of Comcast and Verizon successfully working together to create cool consumer tech, I’d love to hear about it.

For the record, though, the two companies didn’t seem to have those doubts back in March 2012. Back then, when the companies were still trying to get federal approval for the deal, they were pointing to the JV as a big win for consumers.

Here’s what Comcast executive vice president David Cohen told a Senate subcommittee back then:

“By enhancing the Cable Companies’ and Verizon Wireless’s own products and services, the Joint Venture will compete with similar solutions that AT&T, Dish Network, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and others already have introduced into the marketplace. This, in turn, will spur other companies to respond, perpetuating a cycle of competitive investment and innovation.”

And here’s what Verizon is saying, via a spokesperson, today:

“The joint venture was formed to bring innovation to the marketplace and enhance the customer experience through technology that integrated wireline and wireless products and services. Evolving technology and market changes since the joint venture was formed have led all parties to conclude that a joint venture, per se, is no longer needed to deliver innovative services to customers. Verizon Wireless and the cable companies will continue to explore ways to collaborate on technology in the future. Each company remains committed to bringing innovation to its customers and will continue to find ways to optimize the user experience for each company’s products.”

If you’re a skeptical person, you might think that Comcast and Verizon were overselling the benefits of the JV from the start. You might think that they never really thought they could successfully compete with the likes of Apple and Google, but were holding out the idea because consumer groups were unhappy with the other parts of their pact, which seemed likely to reduce competition between the two companies.

On the other hand, both Comcast and Verizon did assign people to work on this stuff together, and they did do some work. Comcast, for instance, points to the Xfinity TV Player app, which lets you download movies and TV shows to your iPad and iPhone and take them with you, as an example of the joint venture’s output. [Update: Strike that. A Comcast rep tells us we had bad information: The app was made in-house, not via the JV.]

So, if you were a different kind of skeptical person, you might think that Comcast and Verizon really did think they could successfully compete with the likes of Apple and Google. And the fact that it only took them 17 months to realize they were wrong – and pull the plug – is a good thing.

Like this:

Is the price of Apple’s new iPhone 5c too high for the market for which it was intended?

Not according to CEO Tim Cook, who said the device isn’t intended for the unsubsidized prepaid customers that many observers thought it might be. During a Monday earnings call, Cook said the 5c isn’t the long-rumored “budget iPhone,” nor was it conceived as that.

“If you look at what we’ve done with our iPhone line, we’re selling the iPhone 4s as our entry-level offer,” Cook said. “We’re selling the iPhone 5c as sort of a mid-tier offer and then we have the iPhone 5s. Our goal is to have overall growth for the total iPhone [line], but also growth within each of those categories. … I realize that some people were reading rumors that the entry phone would be the 5c, but that was never our intent. Our entry iPhone is the iPhone 4s.”

In other words, Apple’s plan all along was to use a legacy device as its entry-level iPhone, just as it has done for years. And, as I’ve written before, the 5c was a move to establish a new mainstream price band between the smartphone market’s high end and its low end: “Historically, Apple has done quite well for itself using mid-tier products with lots of aspirational appeal to draw budget-conscious consumers into a higher price range. It did it with the iPod nano, and again with the iPad mini.”